Today in history for Monday, Feb. 18, 2013

■ On Feb. 18, 1913, Mexican President Francisco I. Madero and Vice President Jose Maria Pino Suarez were arrested during a military coup (both resigned their positions the next day, and both were shot to death on Feb. 22, 1913).

■ In 1735, the first opera presented in America, “Flora, or Hob in the Well,” was performed in present-day Charleston, S.C.

■ In 1861, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as provisional president of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Ala.

■ In 1885, Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was published in the U.S. for the first time.

■ In 1943, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, the wife of the Chinese leader, addressed members of the Senate and then the House, becoming the first Chinese national to address both houses of the U.S. Congress.

■ In 1970, the “Chicago Seven” defendants were found not guilty of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic national convention; five were convicted of violating the Anti-Riot Act of 1968 (those convictions were later reversed).

■ In 1977, the space shuttle Enterprise, sitting atop a Boeing 747, went on its debut “flight” above the Mojave Desert.

■ In 1988, Anthony M. Kennedy was sworn in as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

■ In 2001, auto racing star Dale Earnhardt Sr. died in a crash at the Daytona 500; he was 49.